Night Bus @ Freshers Fest!

As you will know from my previous blogs the Nightbus will be back up and running at all our major club nights from next week, but the big hole that this didn't cover was Freshers Fest. With 4000 tickets available this year for Freshers Fest, more so than ever before, both myself and the Freshers Fest committee felt it was essential that transport home was provided for our students, something that wasn't planned for.

With this in mind I discussed the reasons for not providing transport home this year with the Guild and discovered that a lack of numbers until closing time when everyone decided to leave was the reason behind it, essentially it just wasn't a worthwhile use of money to hire coaches which were only 25% full.

So instead I cam up with the idea of using Castle Cars and essentially providing additional Night Busses to all our Freshers Fest Venues. This compromise has proved to be a financially viable option and so I am very happy that we booked these extra Night Busses yesterday! This provides an essential Welfare service home to students who are in a new city, don't yet know where they are going and are susceptible to being ripped off by dodgy taxi drivers. But it also helps to promote the Night Bus brand and get our new students in the habit straight away of using the Night Bus to get home....two birds one stone?

In addition to these additional Night Busses I have also spoke to Castle Cars about providing taxi ranks at all of our Freshers Fest Venues to ensure that if they cannot get in the Night Bus they can still use our accredited taxi's which come equipped with our emergency fare scheme (use your student card to pay if you have no money, then come pay the fare and collect your id card at the Guild the next day). There will also be official stewards outside each venue to point students in the right direction.

So if you are going on Freshers Fest next week, make sure you are safe getting home...use the Night Bus!

are you a fresher? have your say!

Are you a new Undergraduate student coming to University for the first time? If so then the Guild of Students wants you to take part in our Freshers Survey 09. As a new student we are keen to find out about your expectations, worries, attitudes, and understanding of the Guild and our role. This is so we can ensure we are delivering what our members (you!) need.

We are asking new students to complete a short online survey which should take around 4 minutes. As a thank you for your valued input, one of the completed surveys will be picked at random to win an iPod, and one runner up will win an iPod Nano. To complete the survey please click here

awards, re-use and open days

Well this week has been very busy but a lot of this is just general build up to the return of students...I can't wait Selly Oak has been quiet for far too long!

Anyway this week I have done a whole host of things outside my normal routine, on Wednesday I got involved in the Re-use initiative along with the rest of the sabbs, we spent a couple of hours at Jarrat Hall sorting through all the bits and pieces kindly donated to this years cohort. It was some good banter, and we got that warm fuzzy feeling from doing something worthwile...good times!

Thursday saw the Best Bar None awards, we were nominated for best surburban bar. The awards are based on our policies regarding safe and responsible drinking, customer satisafaction and the like, essentially making us a responsible venue to drink in, the fantastic news is that we won!!!!! and narrowly missed out on overall best venue in Birmingham. Congratulations go the all the staff and student staff that worked so hard this last year and here's to next year...could we win the big one?

Saturday saw Open Day and once again all the sabbs were out in force manning the sports and Guild stalls in the Great hall as well as welcoming people to the Guild and showing them round our sexy new retail area...it was a huge success talking to both prospective students for next year as well as some of the freshers arriving next weekend.

In other Guild goings-on, I chaired the first R and HR committee of the year, discussing all things from equality to job evaluation. I also met with Jane Tope the Equality and Diversity Advisor for the University. We covered a whole host of issues that we hope to work together on this year:

• Black History Month is taking place in October and we are plannign to host a Guild launch party for the University's activities in the second week of October, keep an eye out for more details soon
  
• We are marching ahead with out plans to host a networking event for student parents in the first couple of weeks of term, this will be a great chance or student parents to meet up, get to know each other and also talk to the Guild about issues they face and how we can help. I also intend to lobby the University to collect data on how many student parents we have at Birmngham which would be a great start to assessing their needs.


• I will also be working closely with the Universtiy on how we can make better provision for disabled students along with a report on how accesible we are. I am also on the hunt for a Disabled Students Officer and to get the Disabled students assosciation active for the first time in a few years...if you are interested please let me know.


• I discussed the provision of LGBT housing in halls for the first time this year, it was interesting to discover that there was minimal interest in the scheme. I want to work closely with the LGBTQ society this year to look at how we can make active LGBT communities within halls without segregating students into their own specific accomodation.
  

Finally I have been working closely with the LGBTQ society with regards to how they would like to make their voice heard when the National Blood Service return to campus. I feel it is important that they have the opportunity to make people aware of the unfair donation policy of the NBS whilst not discouraging students who can donate blood from doing so. The LGBTQ society have decided to do just this and will be launching their 'donate because I can't' campaign on Friday 25th September, go visit them on the front car park for more information. In the meantime I will be meeting with the Marrow society this week to discuss bringing the Anthony Nolan Trust to campus who have a much fairer donation policy.

That's it for now any questions or ideas on anything that I have discussed above please email me or leave a comment.

Weekly roundup...

Well it turned September in the Guild and my calendar appeared to explode this week but I definately feel like i'm getting into my stride now and so far so good...i'm loving it!

I have already blogged a couple of times this week on some of the big things I have been doing but here is a quick break down of everything else...

Started off the week with a mass of job applications landing on my desk, i'm involved in the recruitment of two education and welfare advisors for the ARC as well as a student support advisor (one of the mentor co-ordinators). We had an insane amount of applications and reading through them all took up a lot of time this week, the good news though is with such competitive vacancies we are sure to get some more fantastic staff working for us very soon!

I have also been finalisng plans for the Equality and Diversty Committee ready, we now have the provisional terms of reference sorted so we know what the point of the group is and who is going to be in it (always a good start I reckon!). Elections will be taking place in the first Guild Council at the end of October. There will be four places in the group and anyone can stand to be elected onto it even if you are not a Guild Councillor. More info about what the group does and how to get involved will be available in welcome week.

I have also been involved in discussions about the future of the ARC; as part of the redevelopment the ARC along with the other membership services will be moving and getting a makeover. This is also a great opportunity to review what the ARC does, how we can improve the services we offer and how we go about delivering them. As per usual there is never a straightforward answer but I will be working with the rest of the staff and student advice (the volunteering group that trains volunteers to staff the advice desk) to work out how we make the ARC the best it possibly can be.

In other news I managed to get my hands on approximately 5000 condoms for both Chill Out @ Freshers Fest and Well Being. I have also been helping Freshers Fest with their welfare related activites and spending more time planning the Wellbeing Zone at Welcome Week, (Tuesday 22nd September, 11- 3 -Common Room) Make sure you are there!! I also attended the second democratic review meeting; (we now have an action plan ready to go) and I represented a student in a plagiarism hearing on Friday

Well that's about it for this week, I decided to come home for the weekend and the sunday roast is just about ready, so for now...keep protecting your welfare with a Johnny!

NightBus: ready to go!

Well time for another update, don't expect this every week but I have a lot to say it seems at the moment.

The Nightbus is back...bigger, more frequent and ready for action! After the sucess of the trial for the new nightbus last term (well over 90% capacity full over the two week period) we are going full steam ahead with rolling it out permanenlty this year from Monday 21st September (Welcome Week)

We have two brand new 18 seater minibusses fully badged and branded as NightBus and one of these is also completely wheelchair accessible with the ability to transport up to three people in wheelchairs at any one time.

The service will now also be running every 15 mins from 12:30 with the last bus leaving the City at 3:30 every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday as well as having an official NightBus steward on duty at every venue to direct students and manage the queues.

However i'm sure you will be pleased to note that I won't be resting on my laurels, as soon as the service is back up and running I will be looking at how we can expand and improve. My next two key objectives are to provide transport from Hurst St to cater for our LGBTQ students who often may not have people living in the same halls to travel home with as well as some of our popular venues in Digbeth.

Also in the pipeline are discussions with the police to have proper bus stops and taxi ranks set up outside each of our venues ensuring that the Nightbus and Castle Cars (our recommended taxi company) are on hand to ensure students get home safely.

The NightBus will be on display at the Guild on Monday and Tuesday of Welcome Week so come take a look, grab a timetable and make sure you use it!!

Business Continuity Planning

Hello all, another week is upon us and in between the hours and hours of shortlisting for the ARC advisor and student support staff (over 120 applications!) I attended the Business continuity / local resillience meeting today in the Guild.

As i'm sure everyone is aware swine flu is a big concern as we enter the Autumn period; the combination of the infamous freshers flu with swine flu is a real concern for both the University and the Guild.

With this is mind the Guild has been making plans for the what should happen if there is an outbreak of swine flu, what facilities can run and what happens if we loose a large proportion of our staff in the Guild, compromising the service that we offer. I am currently working on plans that will place the Guild departments into different phases of closure, closing those departments that are less vital to the day to day running of the Guild and conversely keeping those which are the most important / beneficial to students open.

In addition the Guild is also formulating plans on how to communicate what is happening to the students should we need to act, as well as what we can do to rearrange or adapt our welcome week actitivites if needed.

What is important to note is that the Guild is making plans and will be ready for action should the worst happen, But for now just remember that this is an eventuality that will hopefully never occur, unless otherwise stated it is business as usual and I can't wait to see everyone enjoying the best welcome week yet!